World Transfers

[Milarien]

The thing that really grinds my gears (lol)...folks going on about losing their name...just add a bloody surname.
How hard is that? I know, I know..."I don't want to use a surname!" "Using only my first name defines who I am!!" "Only hobbits have surnames!!!" etc. etc. etc.
I'm sorry, I apologize if I'm coming across as rude, but this sort of #### I can't take seriously.
First World Problems, folks.

I already know I am going to have to change my main (assuming E closes). There is a toon on the server we want to move to (assuming it stays open) that was logged on in April (less than a year ago) with my name. It's a level 6 champion.

It's hard to accept that a storage toon or, far more likely (given the lack of logins), a name place-holder, will get the name I put a lot of thought into, created in beta, and got a lot of compliments on over the years. It was carefully crafted from a combination of Tolkien's elvish, my MMO nickname, and proper Tolkien elf names. My /played time on this toon alone is over 5 1/2 months. If you google LotRO and my character's name, the vast majority of the initial results will refer to my toon. I even contributed to early minstrel class guides, and old-timers probably know me from various betas. It would be hard to find someone as attached to their name as I am.

However, I accept the fact that Turbine has to have some sort of orderly method for the name change process. If I have to accept the name change as part of the ability to continue playing, well, then, I'll survive, won't I? It's not the end of the world. I just hope there's something I like still available when it's that time.

[Gwanwyn]

I think we are at the point of no return with this one.... Also, there is something I didn't consider: People with rename tokens NOW could claim an inactive name before you are able to. Changing the name a rename token works is something that probably requires some recoding, and to postpone everything after this week's announcement is probably not going to happen. That ship has sailed I think.

That said, you can KEEP the rename token, not use it for months, and maybe eventually they will allow just that, and you can use it then. No reason to stop the transfers now.

I'm actually of the "Lets get it over with" crowd. Bring it on, do the transfers. I will deal with the pain of name changes later.

I highly doubt that the naming tokens would free up an inactive name. It has already been stated that during the transfer, the world looks for a naming conflict. The most recently active character/account keeps the name and the inactive one gets the token.

I would rather get the transfers over with as well. However, I would like it to be done in a more fair way. Having the 10 worlds being able to transfer at will, before the dying servers get to leave, seems vastly unbalanced to me. I understand that they'd need to test out how it works. However, there are other ways to do that which would be must more balanced.

[Silmelin]

If they are GOOD friends, you could contact them, ask them for their user id and password, and perform any moves for them, or reserve their name for them. I already know I will probably lose someone from my kin, who had SAID to keep him in kin while he serves on some ship in the pacific in the Navy, and I do not have contact details for him. He left in January, literary like a week before the transfers, and he said he would be back some time in 2016 as he would be stationed in Japan for a year.

It's a bad idea to share login info

No one is being chased away. In addition to in-game email, Turbine will send out mails to their registered account email, so they will know that their server is closing. Of course they won't know where everyone has gone, but that isn't something we can do anything about. In-game email will be kept for 6 months (basically, till the time the server REALLY closes at the end of the year), so if they log on before that, they can follow the kinship.

I think you misunderstood me
I'm not talking about what happens now, I'm talking about Vyvyanne's post about maybe looking into a change in the future that would make it possible for people to at any time buy a rename and take the name of someone who has been away for a while:

Originally Posted by Vyvyanne
Rename tokens do not work the same way as transfers when it comes to overwriting another name. We can look at making a change to this later down the line after the majority of transfers are completed, but for this time frame we feel it is better to give the players who are transferring the priority to claim their name from an in-active account, over giving that to a any player using a rename token.

[RJFerret]

Thanks for the reply. Never get rubber banding, just a slight (but immersion breaking) hitch ever 10-20 seconds when riding over landscape with a war steed. Probably texture loading (though I'm on an ssd) but there's been some speculation it could still be server side related, and I was hoping it might increase the games ability to download textures faster as I enter new sections, though those are already likely downloaded and it's just bad client optimization.

So, the question becomes--what WILL we see from new server side hardware? If the big improvement is bigger pipes and faster server processing, yet... at the same time... all the servers are increasing their population, it sounds like it's likely to be a wash in terms of game play, except maybe to smooth out some slow zone times here and there.

Along with the other reply to this, if you set Frill Distance to "Disabled", does it still do it? What if you also lower your Draw Distances? If those have an impact, it has nothing to do with the connection or servers, just your hardware (even with SSD).

We should see nothing with the new hardware. Literally no difference. What should be different is the times when everyone on the server gets frozen for a few seconds, should not happen in the future. The times everyone hits skills and just gets circling "ants" activations, but no skills firing, should not happen as frequently. People will still complain about lag because there are innumerable sources of that outside Turbine's control. No "slow zones" will be affected as that would be more client side.

Just recently returned to the game but cant remember if i will need to reinstall the game for server transfers its been a while since the codemaster transfers and just needed a reminder if anyone can help sorry if its a dumb question but just wanted to make sure.

In this case yes, as they are moving the transfer feature into the game launcher, so if you don't have the game installed, download it at your convenience. Note, you'll be able to transfer years from now even if servers are closed, it will just be your only option, and then only once.

[Silmelin]

Other games have freed up names successfully. I think Blizzard just did it? (I haven't played that in awhile, but I believe I saw that announcement.)

When I've left a game, let subscriptions lapse (mine here is Lifetime), etc, I still keep some track of how the game is doing. I think it was SWTOR that released names, & I went back specifically to save mine. I'm sure some people will lose the names, but odds are, anyone who cares will see announcements about it & protect what they want to protect.

Even if we have to buy a name change, they really should consider freeing old names once the transfers are complete. I do feel people who currently play, have active subscriptions, should take precedence, especially since we're losing names/houses/kin, & servers.

That wouldn't be so hard for those with just a few characters, but what about those with tons of characters? It would take ages having to make sure they're all played equally often, and it would be more like work than having fun, at least for me.



I'm planning on sticking to this game forever, and I have lots of fun with all my lil characters, but they are many. More than many, even. I still want to play for fun, to do what I enjoy, not to have to sit with schedules and logging in on each and everyone of them to make sure none is accidentally skipped, and to do that over and over just like on the games I used to play until I finally found this one who let me play as I chose, when I wanted to, which character I wanted to.

Please Turbine, I understand that you might in the future want to free up names of those who have left the game to not return, but please don't make those of us who will stay forever work hard just to keep what we have Please try to figure out some kind of work-around for those of us who will stick to you like the slime of the Rushock Bog slugs forever! <3

[Ellyllon]

I think they should only remove from inactive *accounts,* not rarely used characters. I'm not sure why it seems to be set up to target specific characters rather than inactive accounts, though maybe I'm misunderstanding that. (and it would be nice if they freed names, then gave a period of free renames, but that's hard to imagine.)

[LordKernigit]

Along with the other reply to this, if you set Frill Distance to "Disabled", does it still do it? What if you also lower your Draw Distances? If those have an impact, it has nothing to do with the connection or servers, just your hardware (even with SSD).

We should see nothing with the new hardware. Literally no difference. What should be different is the times when everyone on the server gets frozen for a few seconds, should not happen in the future. The times everyone hits skills and just gets circling "ants" activations, but no skills firing, should not happen as frequently. People will still complain about lag because there are innumerable sources of that outside Turbine's control. No "slow zones" will be affected as that would be more client side.



In this case yes, as they are moving the transfer feature into the game launcher, so if you don't have the game installed, download it at your convenience. Note, you'll be able to transfer years from now even if servers are closed, it will just be your only option, and then only once.

Good to know thank you for helping me out

[TharbadThief]

I can't believe I just read 632 posts in one go.

[Boskone08]

Regarding names:

(1) Name conflicts may not be as bad as many folks think. I have a large number of characters and a significant number of names (142 distinct names) and have run into very few conflicts (several were with accounts I had forgotten I made). Not saying by any means it can not happen (we have several self-announced conflicts, and they have my sympathy), but it's not going to be that many for most folks.

(2) If you have a target server and strong reason to believe your current server(s) will fall in the Not-so-Great Server Closure, seriously consider dropping your doppelganger on Target Server a note, asking how 'attached' they are to the name. I can only speak for myself, but in most cases, I'd be very willing to rename one of my characters to help make another player more comfortable in-game, especially if the option was that player deciding to leave the game. At worst, you're out 50 coppers for the mail fee. Asking a Level 6 semi-active character is, of course, much more likely to get a positive response than asking a Level 100 character that was played yesterday.

(2a) And if the character really is pretty inactive, consider dropping the Kin he/she was in (if any) a note to see if the Level 6 that was played 3 months ago may have a main that is more active, and more likely to provide a response.

(3) But if there is no reply (or a negative one), you gave it your best shot.

[Milarien]

I think the wisest thing we can do, is to start thinking of alternate names now to avoid the need for a last minute name change, that we may come to regret.

I call "dibs" on Purplemonkeydishwasher.

Sometimes, I really wish I could click ^ on a post on here. (aka "Like" or "+1")

[ENDrain]

Hello Vyvyanne,

I'd appreciate if you made some clarification on how kinship naming priority works - as much clarification as you can, please. Say, kin Sample Kinship transfers to a server where a kin named Sample Kinship already exists. Does the transferring kinship ALWAYS gets "-1"? What if the target server's original Sample Kinship is just a pocket kin of less than 10 chars, while the transferring is a couple of hundreds of active players legend? What if all of the players of (original) Sample Kinship were inactive through last year? What if a small minority of (original) Simple Kinship players were active lately and none of them are of rank higher than kinsman/woman?

Thank you.

[Warmutkan]

2. Does the Kinship disband when the Kinleader moves? Yes, it does. This means all messaging to players should be through in-game mail and forums before leaving the world. We can set mail to last longer on the closing worlds (6 months) so that those who log in after the kinleader moves, but before the worlds become unavailable can receive mail on destination target.

Vyvyanne, can we get confirmation on A) that this will be implemented, and B) if it is, when it's getting added?

Some of my kins longest-serving members are on breaks right now, and if my server closes I would like them to be able to access our kinmail after we've disbanded and transferred.

[Primenyc]

is Brandywine as most have paid transfer or rerolled from Nimrodel, etc. Crickhollow rumored to see some action. Also Landroval.

Anything left on Gladden, Elendilmir, Meneldor, or Arkenstone making it worthy of a "specialty (less laggy/zergy) PvMP" tag?

[Ellyllon]

is Brandywine as most have paid transfer or rerolled from Nimrodel, etc. Crickhollow rumored to see some action. Also Landroval.

Anything left on Gladden, Elendilmir, Meneldor, or Arkenstone making it worthy of a "specialty (less laggy/zergy) PvMP" tag?

If they defined 'specialized,' as stated yesterday, (I think), it would make more sense. Not just coming out with it & telling us directly makes no sense, however. Giving weird, & often conflicting, tidbits is *not* helping. I've gone from thinking, "This could be great!" to 'Grrrrr."

[Tuco]

To help with the name collision issue on the remaining servers, a lot of pressure could be relieved if Turbine were to "scour" the remaining servers of all chars level 5 or less that have not been played in 2 months or more. This could be actual deletions (good for the database but prob not a good "customer relations" idea) or just rename all of these to "Name-1". I know for a fact that many people try LOTRO, get part way through the intro, then either abandon the char or even the whole game without deleting the char. Characters of this level will not be in Kins and not have any important items attached. If a 2 month cutoff is used, that would still allow people who are creating "claim holder" chars in anticipation of the transfers.

No. Absolutely not. I would be outraged if this kind of anti-low-level prejudice were implemented.

Two of my favourite characters are on Laurelin: a max-level guilded cook and a max-level farmer and guilded woodworker. Both are level 1 with a [Stone of the Tortoise] bought to get them through the intro looking like non-fighters. Both are Shire homebodies with no interest in combat, but wealthy and useful members of society.

If they ever haven't been played for more than a year, then OK - give me Bagimund-1; but if not I want equal naming rights with the more martially inclined denizens of Middle-earth.

Fortunately I don't expect to have to exert real outrage on this issue, since Vyvyanne has made the naming conflict resolution algorithm clear.

[Ellyllon]

There are a lot of low level Musician Hobbits, too. I don't think level should count at all. However, time of inactivity would be far more fair. (NOT per character, but per account.) If I understand this correctly, a character made back at launch, gotten to L10, & the acct never touched again would still be holding that name forever after, unless someone moves in with that name in an upcoming transfer. If we want that name, that's the only way to get it. That's why I think they should free up names from long inactive accts. (I'd go with 2 years+ rather than 1, personally.) I would not take them from lifetimers, or from any acct that has a current subscription, even if they haven't logged in.

[Milarien]

Can i be so bold as to suggest a kinship rename policy? Since you have said it is a 100 gm controlled process to rename kinships, would it be possible to make it so every kinship ne conflict be resolved with the moved kinship haveing it name with a -server suffix instead of a -1 or rename?
Example my kinship is revelations, if we move to a server with another revelations we could be renamed revelations-FF instead of being renamed.

I love that idea as a general rename policy (kinships and player names)!

I've read speculation on which servers may close, and most seem to think the 5 largest NA servers will stay open. I wonder if it would be easier to keep 1 of the smaller servers open for several reasons. And I say this as a Crickhollower who possibly would be more likely to transfer if they do this, since my server is on the bubble according size wise. First, if people are urgently concerned about losing their name, they stand a much smaller chance of running into naming conflicts transferring into a server with an existing pop of 500 vs. 10,000. (I know nothing about server pop size. I'm just throwing numbers out to illustrate my point.) Second, I wonder about large kinships transferring all their members. Brandywine is off-limits due to its size, but what happens if server #2 starts to fill up quickly and they cut off transfers to this server? Say the kinship leader had already made it known through outside sources they were transferring to this server, but members who log in a few days too late can no longer transfer to the destination server. I have no idea how likely the aforementioned scenario is, but keeping one smaller server around could help alleviate this problem. Finally, I've read comments from players who enjoy playing on a smaller server. If players choose to avoid the small server left open due to its small population, there would still be 4 large servers to accommodate them and 1 smaller server for those who like a more open landscape.

This actually does bring up a point I have to wonder about. What if the vast majority of initial closing-server transfers occur to a single destination server? Will that destination server at some point be removed from the list of possible destinations for later transferees?

Also, about the mail thing -- is it correct that a transferred character's mail messages will disappear from the originating server? For example, if I send a mail message, then transfer, will that mail message remain?

Thanks!

[Mateotdk]

I can't believe I just read 632 posts in one go.

Nor did I until I got to your post. Sigh.


I am going to try and be Mr. Optimistic (should have been a Minstrel). I am holding the faith here that it will all work out more or less. I am not happy for name changes (2 level 60 alts are pretty common on the top 4 servers) and mildly depressed to lose my real estate location of my house and kin house. But I will hope for the best none the less. No one at Turbine "wants to" make you upset. At least, they are getting new servers, adding new content slowly, and informing us VS. closing the game by surprise (IE Infinite Crisis @ https://www.infinitecrisis.com/en/ne...gust-14th-2015).

Lastly, shout out to Arkenstone ... see you on the other side!

[Trixie_Me]

Regarding names:

(1) Name conflicts may not be as bad as many folks think. I have a large number of characters and a significant number of names (142 distinct names) and have run into very few conflicts (several were with accounts I had forgotten I made). Not saying by any means it can not happen (we have several self-announced conflicts, and they have my sympathy), but it's not going to be that many for most folks.

1) I actually think it will be worse than people realize. Not only do you have to contend with the existing server population, you potentially have to compete with 9 other servers. Worse, the option to really compete for a name has been removed because of the staggered implementation. There is a reason that other companies don't do merges like this - the proposed process as I understand it is just patently unfair.

[Milogson]

Long read ahead.

And sorry if this has already been answered in depth. I simply can't sieve through 25 pages of forum entries in depth.

Hypothetical situation:

EU player has bought an LTA a long time ago, plus upgraded the account via several magazine bonus items plus store bought upgrades to contain a total of 10 character slots per server.
Player has increased number of slots to 15 per server but never used them all up.
EU player has created 10 characters on each of the five German servers plus 10 on the DE-RP, plus 10 on each of the three EN servers, plus 10 on EN-RP server.
Total number of characters: 100 characters, 20 RP toons, 80 non-RP-toons.

Problem 1) RP-toons
After consolidation only one EU-RP server remains. This exceeds the player's maximum of 15 toons on the remaining EU-RP server by 5.
Result A) forcing 5 RP toons from either of the previous RP servers to non-RP servers, OR
Result B) pushing 5 RP toons into the unaccessable list on the remaining EU-RP server, thus forcing the player to pay additional money to access his unplayable RP-toons.

Result A) is feasable but not very pleasant if you like to RP and keep your RP toons
Result B) dito, as this forces the player to pay money for something that he already paid money for before ever hearing about any such consolidation.

Problem 2) (which is much worse)
EU player has a total of 80 non-RP toons remaining on all the servers.
Total maximum number of character slots on one server can be 42 maximum.
But this requires the expenditure of upgrading from 15 to 42 slots for ONE server.

Several different possible results here:
Result C) Out of his 50 German non-RP-toons at least 8 would have to move to one non-German server as of the current list of remaining servers even if that player were able or willing to shell out more than 27 character slots worth of TP (upgrade to 42 from 15).

Result D) If the player is unable or unwilling to pay for a total of 27 character slots worth of upgrades but rather wishing to stay at 15 slots per server he is forced to either export a total of 35 German characters to non-German servers, or to have a total of 35 chars unavailable for play.

As 30 characters (10 original from each EN server, plus two groups of five from a disbanded EN server) from the other EN servers are already on the (probably) two remaining EN servers this leaves him only one other EN server to accomodate the overage. Unluckily this means that a total of 20 characters now become unavailable for play. Very unsatisfying.

This result D gets even more exacerbating if RP-toons are moved to non-RP EU servers.

Solutions to this with the current TB setup: none that I see as of now.
But know this: THIS move by Turbine will definitely piss off quite a lot of players.

If the EU servers had remained at two per language, plus one RP per language (sorry, my dear French neighbors, you would have remained at one French + one FR-RP server ) the effects would have been less pronounced. Now, as it stands, this will not be fun, to say the least.

Add to that the comparatively tiny and insignificant losses of loosing your house location, possibly loosing all luxury housing as these will almost all be closed on the recieving servers, loosing long standing kinship housing locations, loosing your friends from established neighborhoods (I know of a group of players owning virtually all of a quarter's luxury and kinship houses - the kinleader of their largest kinship will be ticked off massively), loosing the friendlist, loosing names (possibly), etc...
-- the list of grievances will be long and players will leave in droves.

Because this massive reduction of EU servers by Turbine will be the straw that finally broke the camel's back.

If nothing is done to address all of these issues in a reasonable way and quickly at that I see a very disgruntled player base at best, at worst EU servers with with a total of less than a fifth of the total previous player base.

*************
*************

Note that I have not used excessive numbers but rather a very possible, realistic value. For a buddy of mine this is a real situation.
The numbers can be set to a much greater value, with even more closed slots due a massive altoholic using his slots for storage toons.

If the numbers were set to maximum simply for the German and English EU servers the final numbers would look like this:
21 toons currently per German server * 6 German servers = 126 toons.
21 toons currently per EN server * 5 EN servers = 105 toons.
Total numbers 231 toons.

Net result max toons on remaining EU servers EVER after consolidation: 5 servers *41 (new max char slots) = 205 toons.

Net max difference= 26 toons lost. Period. No way around that.
Including dumping English and German toons on the remaining FR server.

Even if a player were willing to shell out the 21 slot increase for each remaining server. Which is something I consider very unlikely.
In effect Turbine is kicking some players in the nuts. Not just a slight tap, but a full-blown, run-up-included kick to the balls.

So what happens to these? Are these players going to applaud? Pretty certainly not.


And as Turbine in their infinite wisdom have still not decided to adress the adress issues of the different data base formats from the previous Codemaster/TB mix-up in over three years there will obviously still be no solution until it's too late - faaar too late. Still no transfers from EU to US or vice versa.

Bra-vo, Turbine, Bra-vo! .

[Ellyllon]

My Name Securing scheme would work a whole lot better if I could switch servers without quitting the game & relogging.

[Rahukal]

So if I have a loremaster named Frank on a closing server A, and I transfer my Guardian Sam to the remaining server B, and I have a dog named Fluffy and two cats both named Latifah, and train C leaves the station going 60 miles per hour, does a finitely presented homogeneous structure for a finite relational language have finitely many reducts?

If Turbine does not answer my question I will cancel my 20 subscriptions with 100 bots each (I use to reserve any possible name I might ever want to use) and I will never return.

[Thurallor]

What if the vast majority of initial closing-server transfers occur to a single destination server? Will that destination server at some point be removed from the list of possible destinations for later transferees?

Interesting question.

With all servers operating at something close to capacity, it's going to be more important to maintain population balance among them. Turbine is going to have to come up with a short-term strategy for ensuring the free transfers are distributed evenly, and a long-term strategy for ensuring that the balance is maintained over time.

Perhaps a system of incentives (where it costs more to transfer to a high-population server, and/or you get special bounties for transferring to a low-population server) could be implemented. The simple approach (shutting off transfers to servers when the players start complaining about lag) is inferior, but also low-cost.

[bambubambubambu]

So if I have a loremaster named Frank on a closing server A, and I transfer my Guardian Sam to the remaining server B, and I have a dog named Fluffy and two cats both named Latifah, and train C leaves the station going 60 miles per hour, does a finitely presented homogeneous structure for a finite relational language have finitely many reducts?

If Turbine does not answer my question I will cancel my 20 subscriptions with 100 bots each (I use to reserve any possible name I might ever want to use) and I will never return.

The answer is toss the cats off the train 'cause cats are evil. Problem solved!

[RJFerret]

Also, about the mail thing -- is it correct that a transferred character's mail messages will disappear from the originating server? For example, if I send a mail message, then transfer, will that mail message remain?

I can't imagine mail would be removed, as currently the retention of mail is based on the recipient's choice. It would also negate the purpose of Vyvyanne suggesting extending mail out six months on the closing servers so returning kinmates would know where their kin went. As the only in-game method of reaching them once the kin has left (since MoTD no longer applies), this is critical.